


Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, Poet Erik, Post-World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-WWI AU, wherein Erik is an ex-pat who writes angry poetry and drinks too much, and Charles - well, Charles does a little bit of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to pocky_slash for looking this over.
> 
> There will probably be more ficlets from this universe in the future; this one is how Erik and Charles first meet.

London feels heavy and oppressive after Paris, or at least the selected parts of Paris Erik has holed up in these past few years. He owes Emma, though, which is why he is attending this party in the first place, why he allows her to show him off to these boring, snobbish people who seem to go back and forth between fawning over him and looking down their noses at him.

There's one critic, in particular, whom Erik meets and recognizes instantly from a review he has memorized, a pan that scolded his first collection for the _crudeness_ and _vulgarity_ of the language and message. _That's the goddamn point_ , Erik had thought the first time he read it, _there's nothing cruder or more vulgar than this war and all its pointless goddamn deaths_. The critic is just as Erik had imagined him to be, fat and old and oh-so-comfortable, and Erik shakes his hand when they're introduced and doesn't say a word of what he wants to.

However much he may owe Emma, he has his limits, and halfway through the night he has no scruples about taking another one of the flutes of the champagne that seems to be flowing like water and making his way out into the gardens behind Emma's mansion. He leans against the wall, hard brick against his back, and swallows down the alcohol in one swig before setting the glass down on the grass beside him and getting his matches and cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

Erik's halfway through the smoke when he hears the sound of wheels against pavement; a few second later a man in a wheelchair turns the corner around the hedge and comes to a stop on the path, a few feet in front of Erik. 

The man gives Erik a long considering look, which Erik returns in kind.

"I don't suppose you have another of those to spare?" the man says after a moment.

Erik covers the ground between them in a few steps. He takes his cigarette case out of his pocket and, opening it, offers it out to the man, still silent.

The man takes one, very carefully. Erik doesn't miss the slight tremor in his hand, however carefully the man is working to steady it. He gets out his matches and lights the cigarette for him without being asked.

"Thank you," the man says, bows his head briefly in acknowledgment. There's something in his tone a little bit like a private bit of humor, though Erik has no idea what the joke may be. 

His voice is rich and plummy; before the war, Erik wouldn't have known the difference, but he's met enough Brits since then to know that the accent is upper-class, the sort that usually comes mixed with some brainless classist twit who thinks all Yanks are trash, and the poor even worse. This man, though, doesn't look brainless; there's something in his eyes that Erik likes despite himself, some flash of self-knowledge or curiosity. They're striking eyes, anyway, a particularly vivid shade of blue that seems to glow, even in the dim light of the lanterns back here.

"Don't mention it," Erik says, finally. 

The man smiles and takes a deep drag off the smoke. When he breathes out, he tilts his head back, exhaling the smoke up to the moon. It bares his entire throat and neck to Erik's view, pale and unmarked with the occasional freckle.

"I'm Erik Lehnsherr," Erik says. His parents had changed their last name when the war started, afraid of sounding too obviously German. Erik had refused to do likewise, as much out of pride as anything else, though the gesture had been useless anyway; no matter how innocuous their name might be, his parents were still marked as immigrants, still spoke with the same thick accents of their mother tongue.

They both died of the flu before Erik was out of the army, removing the only thing tying him back to America. Somewhere in New Jersey they're buried under stones marked _Lord_ , and it still burns in his belly.

"I know who you are," the man in the wheelchair says. "You're the reason I agreed to come to this party at all." He switches the cigarette to his left hand and extends his right for a handshake. Erik hesitates for a moment before doing it. The man's grip is firmer than Erik would have guessed. "I'm Charles Xavier," he continues. "Pleasure to meet you. Your work is magnificent."

Erik grunts. He's never been good at accepting compliments, and about his poetry it's next to impossible. He doesn't - he can't - talk about his writing. Everything he has to say goes into the work itself; there's nothing left to discuss. 

The name, though, seems to flag something somewhere in his mind. Charles Xavier: surely that was one of the names Emma had mentioned as particularly wanting him to meet. Cultural criticism, education reform, scientific research - a brilliant polymath; Emma hadn't shut up about him at lunch. Erik had imagined him differently. Middle-aged, balding, perhaps, with bad posture and a potbelly, someone who spoke lots but did little. He hadn't imagined another young man. Certainly not another soldier.

"I believe we're both supposed to be inside being introduced to each other about now," Erik says, and Charles smiles ruefully. 

"My ex-fiancee just entered with her new husband," Charles explains. "I thought it might be more comfortable out here for a bit."

"Ex-fiancee," Erik repeats, and despite himself he finds his gaze returning to Charles's legs, still and thin in his chair.

"It isn't what you're thinking," Charles says. "I was the one who called it off."

"Ah," Erik says, with more than a tinge of irony. "I suppose you selflessly released her from her promise when you came home injured, so she could live her life fully? How noble of you."

Charles makes a pained face. "Hardly." He tips ash off onto the sidewalk beside him. The tremor in his hand has calmed again; it seems to come and go with very little pattern. "No, I came back and found that we were both different people than before the war, and I simply didn't love her any more. Or not the way I thought I did, at least. I loved Moira like you love childhood summers or an old stuffed bear, you understand? That same rosy sense of nostalgia and home. It's nothing to base a marriage on."

He flashes Erik another look, a subtle smile marking his face, and Erik is once again struck by the good humor he exhibits. "Besides, can you imagine how ghastly it would be? Having to spend your life knowing everyone is talking behind your back, praising your wife for her saintliness in being with you? How hellish, to be the excuse for someone else's martyrdom. It's bad enough knowing what they say about me now." Charles rolls his eyes. "Half the people in that party are secretly dying to know if I'm only half a man these days."

Erik raises an eyebrow. "And are you?"

This time, Charles's smile almost splits his face in two; the look he gives Erik could almost - no, could definitely be considered a leer. It causes a roil of emotions in Erik's gut. "My dear," Charles says, and something in the way he says it lends the endearment a thrilling weight, "I've had no complaints."

Erik grins. His cigarette is done; he stamps it out beneath his heel. "That doesn't mean much. A working girl isn't going to drive away her customers."

Charles shakes his head. "I don't pay for it."

"What, never?" Erik says, in some disbelief. His own sexual experience has been almost entirely with prostitutes, as is true, he is fairly certain, for most of the men he knows. Sex is a business transaction, friendly enough and mildly enjoyable, but without much emotion; the other person is a means to an end. The exception had been the loss of his virginity, with his high school sweetheart, just before he left for the war. It was awkward and terrifying and had ended with tears on her behalf and embarrassment on his, as he'd been too big, too fast, had hurt her, had failed her somehow with his filthy desires. 

She had died in the flu epidemic, too. Erik still has her picture somewhere, in one of the boxes he never opens.

"It's no fun if the other person doesn't truly want to be there," Charles says. 

Erik can only shrug at that; he's never thought of sex as fun, particularly. It's a release, a bodily need, little more. An itch to scratch, so one can move on.

Charles is looking at him very carefully now. He says, slowly, as if he's weighing the impact his words might have: "You don't believe me, I see. I could prove it to you, though... You could come home with me." His hand is shaking again as he drops his butt onto the pavement as well, looking away from Erik as he does it, giving Erik time to collect himself.

The hairs on Erik's arms are standing up, though it's warm in the garden, in the late spring air. He's met queers before, of course, in Paris, is - not friends, because Erik doesn't really have any friends, unless one counts Emma - but he's at least acquaintances with them, goes to the same cafes, the same parties. He's never thought of it as it might apply to himself, though, never considered it. Never met a man who caused any desire to form in him, until now. Few enough women, for that matter.

"How far away do you live?" Erik says slowly, and he feels vindicated, somehow, when Charles exhales, letting out the breath he'd been holding, awaiting Erik's answer.

* * *

He wakes up in the early hours of the morning, in Charles's massive brass bed. Charles, still nude, rests his head upon Erik's chest; his arms are wrapped tightly around Erik's torso. Erik isn't entirely certain if he should feel smothered. Even in the darkness of the room Erik can make out the juxtaposition of the dark, newly-formed bruises against the pale skin of Charles's shoulders and upper arms, and it sparks a deep sense of satisfaction in him. He untangles himself, as carefully as he can, from Charles's grip, but despite his best efforts, Charles awakes in the process.

"Erik? Are you leaving?" He sounds younger, more vulnerable like this. Not so much the self-contained cosmopolitan who'd picked Erik up. Erik finds, to his surprise, it only causes him to like Charles that much more.

"Go back to sleep," Erik says, smoothing his hand down Charles's untidy hair. "I'll be back to bed soon."

Charles turns a little onto his side, burying his face into the pillow, and Erik stands up and makes his way into the next room. He lights a lamp and seats himself at Charles's large desk, searching through the drawers until he founds a pen and some paper. 

His promise to Charles is, as it turns out, a lie; he doesn't make it back to the bed that night. When the morning comes, it finds him there, still seated there and working furiously on the poem until Charles awakes again, comes and drags him away long enough to swallow down eggs and coffee before letting him return to his work. By the time he returns to Charles's bed, it's night once more. All the shapes in the room are swallowed by shadows and darkness, leaving only the unexpected sweet peace of the bedclothes, and their bodies, and their touch: the closest thing to a sanctuary, Erik thinks with some confusion, that he's felt in any number of years.


End file.
